


keep it brief

by sullypants



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Drabble Collection, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:06:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 1,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24860533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sullypants/pseuds/sullypants
Summary: A collection of 100-word drabbles.
Relationships: Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12





	1. an unconventional way of saying I love you

**Author's Note:**

> This is a collection of drabbles I've written for the [Bughead Drabble Challenge](https://bugheaddrabblechallenge.tumblr.com/), plus some other 100-word drabbles I wrote independent of that. I just wanted someplace to keep track of them that wasn't tumblr's archives. 
> 
> Enjoy xo

She doesn’t notice it, but by the time she looks up from correcting proofs, four hours have passed and she’s accumulated five empty mugs.

She’s got no recollection of brewing a single cup. But there’s also an empty plate that clearly once held a Pop’s burger, and she’s ninety-five percent positive _she_ didn’t eat dinner. Theirs was a household loath to waste a perfectly good burger.

It’s late; it’s nearly midnight. Her focus has been single-minded and unceasing; sleep will be bliss. Judging by the tea bags, at some point her drinks switched from full-caff orange pekoe to caffeine-free peppermint.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> March 2020.


	2. midnight at the swimming hole

It seems like a lark more easily accomplished at night. Things that happen after midnight don’t really count; _we’re only eighteen once_. The lack of swimsuits isn’t even discussed, everyone sheds their clothes and runs into the water so quickly, just pale blurs in the dark.

It’s late August. They’re all leaving in about a week, and she finds it funny that here, hidden by the submerged roots of the tree that holds the rope swing she used to be afraid to jump from—here, _this_ is the moment—Jughead Jones stops swimming around her, and slowly floats up to kiss her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> March 2020.


	3. gossip

Betty hears it from Archie, who got it from Veronica, who overheard Cheryl telling Reggie that _she’d_ heard Jughead tell Pop on Friday night while receiving his _nth_ pour of coffee. **  
**

(Only Jughead gets bottomless coffee at Pop’s—but only Jughead has tested the boundaries of the offer.)

It’s a state school, the aid package is generous. 

Betty hears it from Archie, but it isn’t news. She and Jughead opened their letters together, adult bodies cramped close in the old treehouse. They celebrate his news (and her’s) with a kiss, and start to discuss the logistics of a new relationship, long-distance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> March 2020.


	4. grass

They’re in isolation for ten days before they decide they need groceries. They make a list, and head out together.

Predictably, the streets are quiet; cars are few, and pedestrians are keeping their distance. 

But—after they’ve passed a few people, and been passed by a few cars—Betty stops short, nose in the air. 

“Okay, I’m not crazy. You smelled that one, too, right? Is _everyone_?” She waves a gloved hand at the car that’s just passed them, at the general neighborhood.

Jughead shrugs, his scarf jostling the reusable shopping bag on his shoulder. 

“It’s end-times, Betty, people are anxious. If being high helps…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> March 2020, prompt from loveleee.


	5. under the bed

It’s Betty house, because there are no visible dust bunnies. 

“What are you doing under here?” 

“Mom says _sometimes you have to face your fears_.”

Jughead nods, slides a shoebox to the side and joins his son, stares cross-eyed at the bed-slats four inches from his nose.

“What are we afraid of?”

That something sinister and sharp will reach out of the dark, grab an ankle _en route_ to the bathroom after midnight. It’s late afternoon, not yet dinnertime. 

It’s Jughead’s house, because its youngest resident is bribed out of his hiding spot by promise of a milkshake at Pop’s.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> March 2020.


	6. wrong person

Betty brings him to the wedding as her plus one. As maid of honor, she doesn’t want to be the only member of the bridal party flying solo. He’s blonde and tall, gainfully employed—everything Alice Cooper would approve.

She enters the ballroom (as _extensively_ rehearsed) on the arm of the best man. _Fancy meeting you here_. It’s cliche, but her smile feels easy. He looks different, but she can’t place it.

When Mr. Blonde-and-Tall leads her onto the floor after the first dance, she catches Best Man’s eye. She realizes she’s never seen him without the hat for this long.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> March 2020. I actually expanded this one into [a three-part prompt-response story](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23335342/chapters/56134027), if you're interested.


	7. jacket

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set sometime during 4x14.

Once he’s out of the woods, she breathes.

Her face in her hands: slow exhale, deep inhale, and repeat. Onto the next part of the plan.

She can’t see him, because she can’t be sure the preppies aren’t watching. She won’t lead them to him.

She opens the closet, and pulls a coat off a hook at random; she buries her nose in the wool at the collar. She can’t remember when she last saw him wear this one, but it still smells like him. 

Her shoulders swim in it and the sleeves hang past her fingers, but she puts it on, and heads back out into the woods.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> March 2020. Prompt from arsenicpanda.


	8. not what it looks like

When the door swings open to reveal her—the blonde, the one who’d flirted with him over the hors d'oeuvres and winked at him when she’d left at Veronica’s summoning—his pants are off. 

He’s bent over the sink, elbow deep in some very ineffective suds he’d managed to lather-up from the bathroom’s bottle of _very_ bougie-looking hand soap. 

( _Thanks, Veronica_.)

His eyes go wide. This couldn’t be more embarrassing. He thinks Reggie intentionally bumped into him. 

( _Do deviled-eggs stain?_ )

“It’s not what it looks like.”

She closes the door behind her, turns the lock.

“It looks like you started without me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> May 2020.


	9. heat wave

_It’s perverse_ , he thinks.

He learned the word recently, in his mom’s book— _definitely_ something she’d rip out of his hands if she saw him with it.

But the summer heat is brutal; the only thing keeping him from melting in a tin-can trailer is Mrs. Andrews’s popsicle stash.

One for each of them, as ever.

Archie drones on, but all Jughead can do is watch Betty lick her popsicle, and feel a shock at… _whatever-it-is_ that feels like it’s hooked itself around his lower spine.

It’s perverse.

Betty smiles at him. He feels his cheeks flush. He blames the heat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> June 2020.


	10. chatroom

Covid means they don’t really see one another outside of their computer screens.

She can wave to Archie from her window, across the yard. 

She can FaceTime Veronica to gossip, Kevin to co-work in congenial silence. 

But she cannot see Jughead.

It’s not until Flutesnoot pairs them for a project that she has an excuse to reach out, to interact with him outside of the _Brady-Bunch_ -zoom-screen full of their classmates.

Their conversations are restricted to DMs in the class’s discord server. 

When she wakes at one-thirty am, unable to sleep, she checks the app on her phone—and there he is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> June 2020.


	11. someone else

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he lies.

His heart does the conga. But he doesn’t want to gloat—Betty just broke up with her boyfriend; she doesn’t need one of her oldest friends instantly creeping on her.

So he listens. Betty doesn’t have much to say about it. 

“I’m actually okay, Jug. It was a long time coming,” she shrugs. 

That’s news. “Really?”

She nods. “There’s…someone else.”

His eyebrows raise. Who could do better than _Betty_? That’s ludicrous. Adam’s an idiot. 

When she finally meets his eyes, her cheekbones flush and her gaze quickly darts away.

_Oh shit_ , he thinks. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> June 2020.


	12. blue and gold couch

“Betty: it’s rank.” 

Kevin purses his lips. “It’s gotta go.”

Betty sighs, surveys the dumpy couch that’s held this spot in the Blue & Gold office longer than she’s been alive.

“I know. I just… I’m nostalgic about it.”

Kevin narrows his eyes. She turns away from the couch, walks back to her desk and busies her hands. 

“ _Bet-ty_ ,” he sing-songs. 

She schools her expression before looking up.

“Did you fuck on this couch, Elizabeth Cooper?”

Her face burns and Kevin gasps gleefully. 

“ _At school_?” 

“Shhh!” She eyes the empty corridor.

Kevin cackles. “Oh, Betty. Such hidden depths. I’m so proud.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> June 2020.


End file.
